Across the Zodiac | Page 2

be detected by an experienced hand;
my friends indicated simple methods of defeating the processes on which decipherers
rely.
"Poe's theory," said the Major, "depends upon the frequent recurrence of certain letters,
syllables, and brief words in any given language; for instance, of e's and t's, tion and ed, a,
and, and the in English. Now it is perfectly easy to introduce abbreviations for each of the
common short words and terminations, and equally easy to baffle the decipherer's
reliance thereon by inserting meaningless symbols to separate the words; by employing
two signs for a common letter, or so arranging your cipher that no one shall without
extreme difficulty know which marks stand for single and which for several combined
letters, where one letter ends and another begins."
After some debate, Colonel A---- wrote down and handed me two lines in a cipher whose
character at once struck me as very remarkable.
"I grant," said I, "that these hieroglyphics might well puzzle a more practised decipherer
than myself. Still, I can point out even here a clue which might help detection. There
occur, even in these two lines, three or four symbols which, from their size and
complication, are evidently abbreviations. Again, the distinct forms are very few, and
have obviously been made to serve for different letters by some slight alterations devised
upon a fixed rule. In a word, the cipher has been constructed upon a general principle;
and though it may take a long time to find out what that principle is, it affords a clue
which, carefully followed out, will probably lead to detection."
"You have perceived," said Colonel A----, "a fact which it took me very long to discover.
I have not deciphered all the more difficult passages of the manuscript from which I took
this example; but I have ascertained the meaning of all its simple characters, and your
inference is certainly correct."
Here he stopped abruptly, as if he thought he had said too much, and the subject dropped.
We reached New York early in the morning and separated, having arranged to visit that
afternoon a celebrated "spiritual" medium who was then giving séances in the Empire
City, and of whom my friend had heard and repeated to me several more or less

marvellous stories. Our visit, however, was unsatisfactory; and as we came away Colonel
A---- said--
"Well, I suppose this experience confirms you in your disbelief?"
"No," said I. "My first visits have generally been failures, and I have more than once been
told that my own temperament is most unfavourable to the success of a seance.
Nevertheless, I have in some cases witnessed marvels perfectly inexplicable by known
natural laws; and I have heard and read of others attested by evidence I certainly cannot
consider inferior to my own."
"Why," he said, "I thought from your conversation last night you were a complete
disbeliever."
"I believe," answered I, "in very little of what I have seen. But that little is quite sufficient
to dispose of the theory of pure imposture. On the other hand, there is nothing spiritual
and nothing very human in the pranks played by or in the presence of the mediums. They
remind one more of the feats of traditionary goblins; mischievous, noisy, untrustworthy;
insensible to ridicule, apparently delighting to make fools of men, and perfectly
indifferent to having the tables turned upon themselves."
"But do you believe in goblins?"
"No," I replied; "no more than in table-turning ghosts, and less than in apparitions. I am
not bound to find either sceptics or spiritualists in plausible explanations. But when they
insist on an alternative to their respective theories, I suggest Puck as at least equally
credible with Satan, Shakespeare, or the parrot-cry of imposture. It is the very
extravagance of illogical temper to call on me to furnish an explanation because I say 'we
know far too little of the thing itself to guess at its causes;' but of the current guesses,
imposture seems inconsistent with the evidence, and 'spiritual agency' with the character
of the phenomena."
"That," replied Colonel A----, "sounds common sense, and sounds even more
commonplace. And yet, no one seems really to draw a strong, clear line between
non-belief and disbelief. And you are the first and only man I ever met who hesitates to
affirm the impossibility of that which seems to him wildly improbable, contrary at once
to received opinion and to his own experience, and contrary, moreover, to all known
natural laws, and all inferences hitherto drawn from them. Your men of science
dogmatise like divines, not only on things they have not seen, but on things they refuse to
see; and your divines are half of them afraid of Satan, and the other half of science."
"The men of science have,"